What has your experience been like escaping the cops?

I can see it being very frustrating at times but I had a pretty crazy police chase today that was some of the most fun I've had with the game. I was running along rooftops, at one point they surrounded and I had no choice but dive into the ocean where I almost ended up drowning. It felt much more like a real police chase then the usual "just drive really fast until you lose them" stuff. I think that if they had killed me then I would have been pretty pissed about the whole thing but getting away was a great feeling.

I love it. It's pretty nerve wrecking.

I love getting away from them, though I've only gotten to 3 stars. It's really damn easy to lose a chopper, just find an overpass or car park or something. Takes forever to lose them though.

I haven't gotten into any fist fights though which sucks because I love the new melee stuff. You get a star super fast. Though it just makes me resort to jump tackling people, which is pretty fucking hilarious. I spent a good hour or so just face planting the ground in various ways. Or onto cars. Off stairs. Balconies. Roofs.

I really do wish there was a timer or bar or something. Also cops love to spawn in front of you, which I'm glad to see is still annoying as ever.

It's fun hiding in a dark alley with your headlights turned off and seeing the cops frantically trying to find you.

Although it's still not as great as the system that was present in Chinatown Wars.

Stars 1-4 are pretty easy to escape from. In particular stars 3 and 4 in GTA V are the easiest the escape from compared to any other game in the series. The police cars seem to get really confused when you go off road and I don't find it too hard to out-speed the ghetto birds. I usually end up finding a good alleyway and waiting until the wanted meter disappears.

Pay n' Sprays still work fine. I don't see the problem. In previous games if you had 2 or more stars you had to use a Pay n' Spray anyway.

edit-- although granted the customs shops adhering to daily hours of operation can be an irritant.

So far the chases have been plenty of fun for me, but even on one star it does seem like it takes a little too long to lose the police. I've been sitting around doing nothing for considerable periods of time, just waiting until the game decides I'm not wanted anyone

Where is the quarry?

Tell me about it...I found this quite strange. Earlier I outran two police helicopters on a jet ski in open ocean in a straight line, eventually they just gave up. I know it must be difficult to strike that gameplay balance between fun and annoying, but it feels like the notoriety system could use some adjustments.

The cops get alerted for everything. I punched a dude, immediately got 2 stars had to steal a ride, got 3 stars. FUUUUUUUUUU

The actual effort in trying to escape is fun. I have better success when i jump out of my car and then run a block or two and try to hide in someones yard or in an alley doorway or something. I feel like a real low life criminal from the TV show COPS...haha

What's not fun is A) have the cops magically start making a b-line for my exact location when they technically should have no idea where im at and B) the amount of time it takes for stars to disappear. My fuckin god can that shit be long sometimes. It's quite ridiculous.

It also does the stupid thing that IV did which is that it spawns cops directly in front of you up the road/street just to try to trip you up and keep you wanted. This is so fuckin cheap. So my tactic is to always go fast enough where i can put some distance behind me and once they get to their vision cones, i stop and hop out to go hide because continually moving at the point, the game tries to dick you over and spawn cops right in your direction

It's fun to escape when I intentionally anger cops, but when I'm trying to find stunt jumps, confession scraps, or just fill out the map (because this game brings out my completionist tendencies) it's really annoying to accidentally hit a dude or jack a car without seeing the cop nearby and then all of a sudden the cops are on my ass. It's even weirder that you seem to go from 1 to 2 stars just by running away. The worst case is when i bump into a dude by accident while on foot, and then he pulls a gun on me, and then i kill him in self defense, and then hella bikers come out of nowhere and i have to kill all of them and then i'm at 3 stars and cop cars come and just run me over and shoot me when i'm on the ground until i'm dead.

My biggest issue with the cops in game is that they seem to be psychic. I'm not referring to suddenly having a wanted level either, I'm referring to being out of the cops sight, going to a hiding place, and suddenly every single cop that was looking for you makes a beeline for your hiding place

I had a really hard time at first, but once i got used to it. I can escape 4 stars pretty easily with some effort. I think its a great system, at first i hated it and thought it was too hard, but now i absolutely love it.

The vision cones are amazing.

I dont even sweat a 1star rating, its easy to ignore.

this. I was sitting in an alley for like 3 minutes and they still were looking. Next time, same wanted level, they stop like 10 seconds after me hiding.

I've always been hiding in the car though. Maybe I should just ditch it in the alley and hide on foot. I'll also try changing car to see if I can just drive by them.

While the system is better than how GTA 4 handled it I have had issues with where making an escape with a jet or helicopter would have police helicopters spawn right in front of me so that's been frustrating. The timer does seem to stay on for longer than it should even at one star and somehow the cops are real good at sniffing me out like bloodhounds even when I slip into an alley way or multistory parking.

@brodehouse: Pedestrians occasionally call the police on you. There was this one instance where I was playing as Trevor and I accidentally walked into this guy on the side of the road. His buddy called the police on me. I was only trying to look at his map. ;-;

During the mission where you fight the Ballas and escape the factory with Lamar and Stretch, , there's an automatic police chase that took me ages to outrun. I failed three times (once hiding in a reservoir and accidentally leaving Lamar behind) and finally hid in the train depot area until the heat died down. It was a bit frustrating tbh.

There are multiple ways you can escape, two of which not many people seem to know about: You can hide in bushes and switching cars lets you enter police vision cones and not be pursued as long as you don't get really close to the cop.

If you hide in a bush or switch a car when the cops don't see you, the arrow on your minimap turns grey. This indicates that you are hidden. The police will not pursue you even if you are inside their vision cones as long as you don't get too close.

Example of car switching:

After switching cars the arrow in the minimap turned grey (which might be hard to see because of my amazing video capture skills), but you can see me pass a police car that is coming straight at me even though I still have two stars.

At first, I thought getting away from the cops in the game was relatively difficult, but I'm finding it a lot easier now that I've had time to play a lot of it. Once you see the vision cones on your map, you do not necessarily even have to stay out of them. I usually try to find an upscale property with high walls and bushes. Typically, the cops will stay on the road so you just have to wait out of their line of sight.

If you're being chased in a vehicle, once the cones pop up, try switching vehicles as the police officers will be looking for whatever vehicle you had when you received the stars (as long as they don't notice you getting into a another one of course). If you have helicopters on you, try to find a tunnel (look for train tracks). It should run through the main city although not exactly sure where it is located.

The best in the series so far, it adds a level of tension that wasn't there before. I love the feeling I get when it starts to flash on a 4 star rating, I love it when I'm hiding and a cop turns around before he gets to me or just passes me.

Most of the time for me it is hard, if I am on a bike I always get rammed from behind and killed even if I am going fast. I have been wanted just from standing and waiting for ski lift or whatever that's called. Seen a youtube video say hiding in a bush can make the cops not see you, that is BS. I have been seen hiding in bushes even when I am under a bridge and they are on top they some how see me. Waiting for the wanted level to go take to long and goes up to 1 to 2 stars real easy. Almost feels that there is no 1 star.

@rautapalli: Great tips, thank you for showing that.

One other basic trick I've found is to slow down once the vision cones come out. I used to keep full throttle through the city and always ran into a new cop; but if you slow way down and focus more on maneuvering and finding that hiding spot, it's a lot easier to lose the cops.

This game is really different because I find it is actually easier to evade cops if you try to evade them realistically. In previous GTA you would just hit the gas and bash through their road blocks and out run them. In this game it is actually wayyyy more effective to speed out of their initial influence area and lose them so they are searching for you... then do one of two things. Run down an alley/hide somewhere out of the way.... or start driving like a normal human being and just take a few turns so you put distance between where you were last seen and where you are. For the drive like a normal human thing it also helps if you switch cars, if you pull that off you will lose them every time unless you then do something dumb in the new car.

I find myself going out of my way too often when being chased. I usually get absurdly far away from the cops just to have more spawn on the roads near me. The one thing I do like is the varying response time instead of having cops spawn on you instantly (or near-instant) like before. But once the chase begins they always spawn in close to you.

i just wait til the cops become vision cones and find a secluded point with low visibility and hide

I had an incident where I was trying to outrun the cops in a tow truck, and accidentally started towing a police car, which made it impossible to lose my wanted level. It was 40 minutes of completely demented, over the top, ridiculous shenanigans with a police car (and cops) in tow.

I haven't had much difficulty evading the 5-0 in GTA V. You can usually outgun them on an open road/swerve in-and-out of traffic to cause the police AI to drive into paralyzed traffic and then just drive around carefully monitoring your mini-map for back-up.

I do wish that the game had a clock/degenerative iconography for how much long the pursuit will continue...much like in Saint's Row. I might just be impatient, but it takes forever to clear a two star rating when hidden.